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Milan Simonich: Public Regulation Commission needs the best and the brightest to shed laughingstock stature

Posted:
02/12/2013 08:35:54 AM MST

If the bumbling at the state Public Regulation Commission were not so serious, it would be comical.

The five elected commissioners, each receiving $90,000 a year from taxpayers, permit public comment at their meetings. But they are so thin-skinned that they silence any speaker who dares to criticize their performance.

Commissioner Valerie Espinoza, D-Santa Fe, took office last month and promptly called for regular closed meetings of this very public agency, whose main responsibility is to decide utility rate cases. Espinoza backed off her secrecy campaign after a well-deserved rebuke from a member of the League of Women Voters.

On a PNM electricity rate case in 2011, then-Commissioner Jason Marks drew up a proposed settlement on a sheet from a notebook, carried it into the hearing room and saw it approved minutes later on a 3-2 vote.

Marks, D-Albuquerque, was a shining light at the PRC, a member who knew every detail and always had the ratepayers' interest in mind. But the other two commissioners who voted for his settlement plan, Jerome Block Jr. and Theresa Becenti-Aguilar, were lightweights who followed the leader.

Block later pleaded guilty to identity theft and fraud related to stealing gasoline while he was a PRC member.

Becenti-Aguilar, originally appointed to the PRC by then-governor Bill Richardson, seldom has a point, much less makes one, on utility or telecommunications cases.

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Yet she talked more than Sean Hannity when the policy organization Think New Mexico proposed that qualifications be raised in order to serve on the PRC.

The standard to be a regulatory commissioner was as low as it gets - one only had to be at least 18 years old and have no felony convictions.
When Becenti-Aguilar spoke up, it was in self-interest.

She called herself "a strong voice" for the public, even though she had no educational credentials or aptitude for the highly technical job that fellow Democrat Richardson handed her.

Voters, showing more wisdom than the former governor, last fall approved a constitutional amendment that indeed will increase qualifications to serve on the PRC. Now the Legislature is wrestling with how to structure the new system.

Sen. Timothy Keller, D-Albuquerque, first pushed a bill that would have allowed people with only a two-year college degree to run for the PRC. It was a bad idea. Keller reversed course last week. He said that at least 12 years' in relevant professional experience, college degrees, or a combination of the two should be required of regulatory commissioners.

Keller, 35, a smart and savvy senator, received his undergraduate degree from Notre Dame and his master's in business administration from Harvard. He may be elected state treasurer, state auditor or even governor within the next 10 years. He is that good.

But with all his expensive education, Keller worried too much about appearing elitist by barring large segments of the population from running for the PRC.

The late Ben Lujan, who was speaker of the House of Representatives, dropped out of college and labored as an ironworker, but he was an outstanding public servant, Keller said in arguing for low qualifications.

In the House of Representatives, Lujan was one of 70 members.

Had he been bad at legislating but good at winning elections, he would have been neutralized by the other 69 House members, 42 senators and the governor. Large government bodies can stop any one member from doing any real damage.

The PRC has just five members. One or two bad ones can hurt ordinary people trying to raise their kids and save some money.

In honor of the public, legislators should show no fear or favor in establishing rigorous qualifications for PRC members.

We do not let just anyone run for the state Supreme Court. We want the best and the brightest justices deciding important cases.

The PRC has an even greater day-to-day influence on what happens to the wallets and neighborhoods of New Mexico residents than does the court.
We have had and still have some bad public regulation commissioners in power. They are a living, breathing reminder that setting a high bar for service on the PRC is a capital idea.

We cannot immediately throw out the bums we have.

We put them in office. But the Legislature has the power and the opportunity to keep other low-quality candidates from occupying those prized seats.

Milan Simonich, Santa Fe bureau chief of Texas-New Mexico Newspapers, can be reached at msimonich@tnmnp.com or 505-820-6898. His blog is at nmcapitolreport.com

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